Ambrosia
by jmfossil
Summary: Dinner was something that Elijah Klein always valued, cherished almost. A chance to talk intimately with his loved ones over a plate of delicious, ambrosial cuisine was something Elijah never took for granted or abused.


_**Disclaimer:**__ I do not own any of the characters in the Harry Potter universe; they go to J.K. Rowling. And all Hogwarts Daily characters are owned by their respectful players._

**A/N:** This one might read a little weird. Even if you have read _What Ty Did_ which I insist you read before reading this; it's crucial to understand this, I tried to keep the recurring theme of meals, like, its relevance to Elijah's lifestyle. Let's see if it works. Haha, enjoy.

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**Ambrosia  
**_  
__After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody.  
-Oscar Wilde_

Dinner was something that Elijah Klein always valued, cherished almost. A chance to talk intimately with his loved ones over a plate of delicious, ambrosial cuisine, be it a savory _gratin dauphinois _or a flavorful _vulavacharu_, was something Elijah never took for granted or abused. So when Ty invited him to a dinner at his flat after a particularly nasty Monday at his work, Elijah graciously accepted.

Though Elijah's plan of a luscious dinner filled with snark and bitchiness was instead filled with pet names and lovey-dovey rigmarole.

Elijah was having dinner with Ty and his fiancé, Ken. He mentally scolded himself for believing that he was going to have Ty to himself for once. He should have known better. Ty and Ken were set to marry in ten days and Elijah was the best man. It's not that Elijah didn't like Ken, not at all. In fact, he found the Muggle, despite his lack of any magical talent, to be quite dashing. But it's merely that when Elijah's around them, he can't help but feel so… single.

"Here you go, Kenzie." Ty fed Ken a bite of the prinzregententorte he brought from his trip to Bavaria when he met with Karl Lagerfeld for business. "Oh, hold on a second, you've got a bit of chocolate on your nose."

"Lick it off?"

Elijah rolled his eyes and swirled his dragon-brewed merlot.

After laughing, Ty did so and swiftly licked off the dollop of dark chocolate on Ken's nose before planting a kiss on his lips. The couple shared another laugh before resuming their dessert. "So, Elle," began Ty, lifting another piece of prinzregententorte to his lips, "what did you do today?"

He was still swirling his merlot. "Nothing really."

There was a pause. For a few seconds all that could be heard was the constant rain outside and the jazz music playing from the surround-sound speakers. "Nothing?" repeated Ken. "Really?"

"Not shopping with Pansy? Not polo with Draco? Not even flipping through magazines with Daphne?" Ty raised his eyebrows. "You seem troubled. Something bothering you, Elle?"

Elijah found some very interesting scratches on the elm dinning table. "I'm just… a little…"

"You're not nervous about the wedding are you?" prompted Ty.

Ken chimed, "Don't worry, I am, too." Ty hit him playfully on the chest.

Chuckling, Elijah said, "No, it's not that. It's only…" He took a deep breath. "When I look at the two of you, I think, 'Wow. They're so lucky.'" Ty and Ken looked at each other adoringly. "'They're getting married. …And I'm not.'" Ty cackled. "It's not funny!"

"Elle, to be quite honest, I find it rather hilarious." Ty finished his wine. "The idea of you wanting to be married is quite preposterous. Espresso?" he offered before walking to the kitchen to make a cup.

Elijah was frowning. Ken insisted, "Don't worry. You'll find someone. When love happens, you can't really predict. Sometimes it happens in your forties, sometimes in your teenage life." Elijah avoided Ty's eyes, but Ken persisted, "Ty and I were lucky we found each other this early."

Despite himself, Elijah smiled. "You're truly a great romantic, aren't you?"

Ken put on a cheesy smile when Ty said, "S'why I'm marrying him."

The following day was the first pleasant, rainless day in almost a month. There was a lovely breeze blowing, making weeping willows sway, almost dance, and the sun was peeking from behind the gray clouds of London, which made Elijah feel like having an outdoor brunch.

Brunch was second in line after dinner on Elijah's meal hierarchy. If dinner wasn't possible, the next best thing was have brunch. The things that Elijah loved about lazy brunches were mini-quiches, decadent pastries, savory soups, and the excuse to drink alcohol first thing in the morning.

So he went to Arbutus, down on Frith Street near Soho Square, literally minutes away from Ty's very first flat on Charing Cross Road. When Arbutus opened six months ago in May, Elijah and Ty immediately went to see what all the fuss was about. Shortly, it became one of their favorite restaurants.

But he wasn't with Ty. Not Ken either. Instead, Elijah was in the company of an already married couple.

"Well, I don't think of us so much as married, but more of 'together'."

Elijah was having brunch with Pansy Parkinson-Longbottom and her husband Neville Longbottom. After Hogwarts, Elijah remained good friends with Pansy, having helped her prevent an arranged marriage between herself and Norbert Leo Macnair, another good friend. A few years after graduation, Pansy got engaged to someone who she actually wanted to spend the rest of her life with: Neville.

They were the couple Elijah wanted to be in, where a well-dressed, affluent Slytherin bitch was in love with a loyal, brave, and dependable man.

"Wait, _are_ we married?" asked Pansy teasingly, taking a forkful of mushroom risotto into her mouth.

Neville nodded, beaming. "Yeah, remember that day you wore the white dress and we got all that flatware?"

Pansy made a face of recollection and said, "Oh! Right." She turned to Elijah across the small table and added, "Maybe I should stop sleeping with other men." This earned her a pinch on the cheeks from Neville.

Elijah didn't roll his eyes or swirl his alcohol at this. In fact, he sniggered along. Pansy and Neville were being couple-y, yes. But it wasn't in that disgusting, sickening, Gilderoy-Lockhart-Valentine-card kind of way. He took a sip of his mimosa.

"What about you?" Neville asked Elijah. "Do you want to get married in the future?"

Elijah swallowed his pork porchetta and replied, "Sometimes. Sometimes I do. Like, when you want to come home to someone waiting for you, who isn't a house-elf… Or like when you two eat of off each other's fork. It gets me so…" He made a gesture with his hands with a strange garbled noise. "But yeah, sometimes."

Pansy stifled her laugh with a silk glovelette-covered hand as Neville cooed, "Aww, that's so sweet."

"Don't get all soft on me," commanded Pansy. She told Elijah, "He is such a puss."

Just then, a man no older than the three patrons at the table stepped up. Elijah, as usual took immediate note of his outfit which was a pair of lackluster jeans and a grey henley topped off with a wool cardigan with an equally wooly scarf of blues and oranges. The man himself was somewhat cute, too.

"Um, hey guys."

"Viktor!" exclaimed Pansy in obviously feigned surprise. Elijah rolled his eyes, but only mentally. "What are you doing here?"

Not giving the man a chance to answer, Neville launched into an introduction. "What a coincidence! Elijah, this is Viktor Scamander, Rolf's brother--"

"--and Luna's brother-in-law!" chimed Pansy. "Viktor, this is Elijah Klein!"

Viktor had brown hair which was ruffled to make it look styled, a bit of a rounded nose, and a warm smile. "Hi," he greeted Elijah politely, Elijah returning the gesture. Viktor sat down on the chair beside Elijah's amidst the over-the-top insisting of Pansy and Neville.

Viktor leaned slightly over to Elijah and whispered good-naturedly, "You know that this is a set up, right?"

Elijah grinned, too. "I could smell it from miles away."

It turned out that Viktor was actually a very pleasant guy. He was an accomplished ecologist who worked closely with his brother, Rolf, the naturalist. He lived in a two-bedroom flat in Richmond with his owl, Demetrius, and his cat, Helena. He wanted a vacation house in Scarborough, North Yorkshire and two kids, preferably both girls.

Naturally, it didn't work out.

It was late afternoon when Elijah Apparated within the walls of the Klein estate in Wilton, Wiltshire. After he finished lunch with Pansy, Neville, and Viktor, Elijah took a stroll in Soho's Golden Square and went shopping at Harrod's. Giving all his shopping bags to Pippy, the family house-elf, Elijah began sorting through the post that Pippy handed him before the elf disappeared with a _pop_. Elijah sat down on a viridian loveseat in the formal living room, opening a letter from Laine.

But before he could even pull out the parchment from the envelope, a pair of hands covered Elijah's eyes from behind the chair. Sighing, Elijah groaned, "Not now, Eliza. I'm not in a very good mood."

"Eliza? Well, I didn't know my hands were that feminine." Elijah pulled the hands of off his eyes and turned to look over his shoulder. "Surprise."

With a relatively manly squeal of glee, Elijah rocketed off the loveseat and ran around it to give Norbert Leo Macnair a huge hug. "Oh my God!" he exclaimed happily. "What-- _how_ are you in here?"

"Your sister let me in," Leo explained, beaming. "Why the not so good mood?" he asked, pulling away.

Elijah shrugged and scoffed, "Pfft, who cares? Now that you're here, my day's gotten much brighter! You're in town for Ty's wedding, right? Where are you staying?"

"The Connaught Hotel in Mayfair," answered Leo, taking a seat in the loveseat, Elijah joining him. "I arrived in London yesterday. The flight from New York to here was unbearable. What have you been up to lately?"

Before responding, Elijah set Laine's letter on the coffee table and said, "Oh you know. The usual. Spending my days bored off my arse. Visiting Uncle Calvin in the States, vacationing with Mum and Dad…"

"Must be a life, not having to work," commented Leo, though he himself loved his career. "Why not be a philanthropist like your sister?"

"Eliza has her own thing happening and I'd rather not get involved."

"Have you ever thought about doing charity work? The world could use it, you know."

Steering the conversation to another topic, Elijah interjected, "What about you? The wedding's in a little over a week. Why so early?"

"What, I'm not allowed to see you?" Leo jested, cupping Elijah's chin with his fingers, Elijah swatting them away.

Elijah chuckled, "Aww, that's cute. …But really, why?"

Laughing, Leo said, "Work. I have a client who wants to open a branch of his business in Diagon Alley."

Flipping his hair slightly, Elijah remarked, "I don't understand why you're still working! The Ministry gave you all your parents' money after throwing them into Azkaban. You don't _need_ to work!"

While this should have offended Leo, he simply smirked, "And spend my days bored off my arse like you do? I'd rather work on Wall Street, thanks very much."

"But why not Gringott's? Or even HSBC? For a man who handles money for a living, you're certainly not taking advantage of your own."

Leo crossed his legs, dusting off imaginary dirt on the hem of his trousers. "Will it make you happy if I spend an unnecessary amount of money on one thing, then?" Elijah nodded eagerly. "Then come to dinner with me."

Elijah paused. "Are you for real?"

"Well he's certainly for real if he's taking you to Petrus tomorrow night."

The next afternoon, Elijah was seated outside a Coffee Republic with Ty in the middle of Hanover Square during Ty's break from work. The offices of Vogue UK were just a few steps away so he and Elijah met up for a drink.

After brunch on Elijah's meal hierarchy was the coffee break, mainly for two reasons. The first reason being the fact that he loved coffee. And the second being that coffee was a tradition for him and Ty. Ever since Hogwarts, a quick trip to the kitchens was always in order. The house-elves made the best espresso they had ever tasted. So whenever the opportunity for a latte or an affogato would pop up, neither would refuse. Doing so was considered a crime.

"And you're deadly serious if you're meeting Ri tomorrow night." Elijah took a sip of his espresso as Ty laughed off his warning. "What, you think I'm joking?"

Ty rolled his eyes. "Elle, it's different now. Granted, Ri has been temptation to me for over ten years now, but I can certainly keep it in my pants." After taking a drink of his macchiato, he then added, "It's not like that time before sixth year. I mean, I was with Oliver. And it wasn't even that serious."

"Yeah," agreed Elijah. "You're engaged now. Way less serious."

"Very funny."

"Seriously, Ty. Call this little… 'congratulatory drink' off." Elijah adjusted his Brownbury scarf. "I'm not saying I don't trust you. I don't trust Ri." Ty gave him a curious look. "Think about it, Ravenclaw," he told Ty with a smidge of sarcasm. "He comes into your life after how many years, hearing about your engagement, and invites you to have a couple of _drinks_ at a _bar_."

"You make it sound like he's going to rape me."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Well, it won't be rape because I'll like it!"

"Ty!"

"Elijah!"

"Just…" As Ty laughed at him, Elijah fell back into his chair because he was this close from getting to his feet and scolding Ty like a mother. "Ty, please! Just listen to me for once! I don't feel very good about this."

"You didn't feel very good about Pansy and Neville either, and now look at them."

Elijah was silent.

"Come on, Elijah." Ty out on a sincere face. "You've seen me and Ken together." Elijah let out a hollow laugh as if to say 'yeah, I have,' but Ty continued. "I would never and could never do anything or do any_one_ to even remotely hurt him." Ty's eyes seemed to sparkle. "I love him too much."

Elijah stared into those sparkling eyes of Ty's before saying, "Oh my God… you're really in love with him, aren't you?'

"I'm marrying him, aren't I?"

Elijah remembered when he felt that way about someone. Struggling to find the words, Elijah finally spluttered, "…I have something to tell you."

"You were in love with me for most of our teenage life?"

"How did-- wha-- I-- how did you know?" Elijah near screeched, prompting a small group of pigeons on the sidewalk to take flight. "I… I never told anyone! Not even Elise! Or Daphne…"

"Oh please, Elijah. Who _didn't _know at Hogwarts? It's like when Draco was infatuated with my lips." Ty was so casual about it that it actually made Elijah a little more uncomfortable. "And during the Triwizard Tournament in seventh year, everyone knew you and Leo wanted to jump each other's bones."

"Everyone?" repeated Elijah, aghast.

"All of Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons," confirmed Ty with a wide grin. "So please, listen to me for once," teased Ty, using Elijah's words, "and go for it. You go ahead and have a romantic candle lit dinner with an intensely gorgeous man at Petrus tomorrow, and let me handle Ri. I can take care of myself."

Elijah managed to nod. "But Ty," he croaked. "Are you okay with the whole… 'I was in love with you' thing?" Elijah was scared for his reaction, but Ty actually scoffed.

"Ellie, you've been my best friend for almost twenty years now. I love you, and I always will." Elijah smiled at this. Then Ty added, "But you know… not like _that_."

"I'm glad. Now I can go and get that hot piece of arse."

"Elijah!"

"Ty!"

After their dinner date the next evening, beneath the canopy of Christmas lights that hung from the trees outside The Connaught Hotel, Elijah was kissing Leo passionately, his arms entwined around the taller man's neck. Leo's hands were planted firmly at Elijah's waist, keeping the two warm bodies close together in the middle of the freezing London night. They broke their kiss, their foreheads pressed to one another's, their breath forming ghostly wisps of warm air in the light of the sparkling canopies.

"How long have we been out here?" Elijah wondered aloud.

Leo shrugged, shivering a little. "Maybe twenty minutes. It's ten to midnight. Why? Do you have a pumpkin to catch?" joked Leo.

Although Elijah didn't get the punch line. "What in blazes are you talking about?"

Leo merely laughed even more and assured him, "Never mind." He started to kiss Elijah again, softer this time with shorter, though equally adoring, butterfly kisses. Elijah's hands found their way into Leo's hair, eliciting a groan from him. Elijah smirked into the kiss. Leo ended the kiss and breathily asked, "Why did I never date you when I had the chance?"

Elijah let out a soft laugh and replied, "You were dating that boy, Dimitry."

"Ah yes." Leo chuckled. "To be fair, you're just as good a kisser as he is."

"Mmm, well then, let me show you I'm better."

The two men resumed their kissing, Elijah pulling Leo closer and tighter, letting out a quiet moan of delight. After all, he had to restrain himself. He was out in the middle of a sidewalk in Mayfair while the doorman to The Connaught was watching them uninterestedly.

Pulling away, his cheeks flushed from the cold, Leo asked tentatively, "Do you want to come up?"

Elijah supposed he didn't have to restrain himself after all. Unfortunately, before Elijah could answer with a zealous 'yes', something in his coat began to vibrate and ring, making him panic. "Ye-- what is that? What-- oh, it's that blasted mobile… Ty gave it to me in case of emergencies," Elijah explained at the sight of Leo's confused expression. He retrieved it from his pocket and stared at it, dumbfounded. "I don't know how this thing works!"

"Let me see." Leo took the phone into his hands, reading the flashing message on the screen. "Yeah, it's Ty. Hold on, where's that answer button… there. Here you go."

Taking the mobile from Leo, Elijah pressed the gadget to his ears, the speaker part at his mouth. "Hello? Hello, Ty? I can't hear you!" he yelled, but Leo grabbed the phone again and pressed it to Elijah's face right-side up with a chortle. "Oh, whoops. There! I can hear-- …I'll be there as soon as I can."

"What's wrong?" Leo's brows were furrowed, a frown tugging at his lips.

Elijah wanted so desperately to stay, to go up to Leo's suite at the five-star Connaught Hotel, to claim what had been rightfully his all this time, but he couldn't. Ty needed him. "I'm sorry," apologized Elijah. "I am so, so sorry… but I have to go. Ty needs me."

Leo didn't say anything. He simply had to nod once, saying, "It's okay."

Elijah closed his coat and almost started to leave, but he stopped himself. Before dashing off, Elijah took hold of Leo once more and locked them into another fiery kiss, pouring all of the things that he needed to say into that one moment, mentally telling Leo that Elijah did want him, that this wasn't over.

"I'll see you at the wedd-- I'll see you. …Thanks for dinner."

Within a few minutes, Elijah Apparated to Ty's side. The instant Elijah appeared, Ty engulfed him in an enormous hug, sobbing deeply into Elijah's shoulder. Elijah could only keep Ty in a firm embrace to comfort his best friend as much as he could. It pained him to hear the constant apologies Ty wept into Elijah's shoulder. "I'm-- sorry! I'm-- s--so-- so--sorry…"

Elijah didn't respond. He stroked Ty's head.

"I couldn't help it… I was drunk…"

"…I told you so."

"I kn--know…"

"And Ken?"

"He doesn't know… I haven't told him. I… I still love him."

"Are you calling the wedding off?"

"…I have t--to. I can't… Not after what I d--did."

"Ri?"

"He left… the minute it was over. …He left."

"Oh Ty…"

He cried harder.

Dinner was something Elijah valued, no, cherished. It was a chance to talk intimately with loved ones, a time to share lives. Elijah never took it for granted or abused it. To do so was a crime. It opened up doors to whole new opportunities. But Robert abused that opportunity. And maybe so did Ty. Elijah didn't know and, to be quite honest, he didn't want to.

Because while Elijah shared his life with Leo over dinner, Ty shared a bed with Ri after.

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**A/N:** Comments, feedback, reviews, _**constructive**_ (I cannot emphasize that enough) criticism... anything is appreciated. Thank you.


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